Is this writer serious? Good grief. Where to start? Ok, let me just tackle the first outrage.
The Bush administration came into office in 2001 committed to reshaping the political map of the Middle East, which was suffering from authoritarian regimes, Islamic extremism, the conflict with Israel and sluggish economies.
The Bush administration came in not with grand designs for reordering the Middle East, but with the determination that we don't do nation-building. It was "compassionate conservatism" and a federal role in education that President Bush thought he would address in his tenure. He was acutely aware of his narrow electoral victory and failure to get a plurality of the votes in 2000 (which in our system is what counts. Remember that President Clinton never won a majority of votes cast in either of his wins.).
But three-thousand dead at the hands of al Qaeda murderers one fine morning five years ago (while he was in an elementary school and not at some Neo-Con think tank, if you will recall) ended his domestic-oriented presidency. Also dead in the rubble of the Pentagon, the Twin Towers, and a hitherto little-known location in Pennsylvania was the belief that so-called stability built on oppression can protect us from a nuclear 9/11 when jihadi fanaticism is fostered by that "stability.
Oh, and while you condemn the president for reacting to the world as it is rather than the world he hoped it would be, never ever remember that President Clinton signed the law making regime change in Iraq our official foreign policy. Funny how nobody recalls that legislation as a determination to reshape the political map of the Middle East. Or maybe not, now that I think about it. Who the Hell expected that president to take action when empty words could suffice--for awhile.
Sometimes the press just pisses me off.
